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August 2011

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I've asked this before, but still not had a good answer. What are tablets for? Not big enough to work on, too big for total portability.

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Guest post at PhD2Published

In response to George Monbiot's piece yesterday, I have a guest post up at PhD2Published on the issue. Specifically, I wanted to look (in brief) at the drivers behind the setup, which are not always down to individual choice but rather more systemic, the way in which institutional factors mask the…

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If you think it's bad, you must publish in OA journals. Simple as that. Preferably ones not run by commercial publishers.

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Next year, I'm giving the opening plenary at the UKSG conference on exactly this theme. Through a zombie metaphor.

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You know what? I, and others, have been harping on about academic publishers for years. It's REF and arbitrary prestige that are the problem

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Hideously uniformed commentary on Radio 4 paper review. No mention of Apple's lock-in techniques, just emphasis on Jobs as "visionary".

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HEFCE board appointments: learning through Argos

On Friday, HEFCE announced its new board members. Here's the rundown: Professor Anne Greenough Professor Anne Greenough is a paediatrician and Professor of Neonatology and Clinical Respiratory Physiology and Head of King’s College London School of Medicine at Guy’s, King’s College and St Thomas’…

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Great stuff on the @GdnHigherEd chat today; lots of useful info on merits of PGCertHE. #phdchat researchers might want to see pg 2.

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Satchmo payment modules

I've been working, over the past few days, on a web store for a client using Satchmo. I wanted to share some of my findings here so that others don't trip up at the same places. Firstly, I've committed a fix that has been pulled into the mainline build which puts images from product variations into…

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Taking time out from academic projects to build a web shop for a client. Currently wrestling with incomplete Google Checkout mod in Satchmo.

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The only part of xkcd that I dislike is the snide jibe: "may not suitable for liberal arts majors". Necessary? We have in-jokes too...

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Did anybody go on the #vitae "Careers in Academia" workshop last year? Would like to hear thoughts on the day... #phdchat

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Aspiring academics! LinkedIn just emailed me exciting job opportunities! Like an unpaid internship at L'Oreal. Because I'm worth it.

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Just written an awesome patch for Satchmo that allows images specific to product variations. Pull request sent :)

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I can well believe many of @InjusticeFacts' tweets but, as with all journalism, I wish they'd cite the academic sources for their claims.

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Pleased to see the @britishlibrary now has Pynchon Notes in its catalogue; for years, it wasn't listed.

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Postgraduate Publishing

This post comes as a therapeutic exercise after having spent longer than I'd hoped bogged down writing an academic journal piece. I wanted to write a little on the topic of getting published as a postgraduate, when to start and how to go about it. I did write on this before, but this is an…

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Hurrah! I can return to a semblance of life. Article on Pynchon, Wallace and "metamodernism" now submitted.

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I've said it before but: I hate how the last 1% of writing a journal article takes 10%+ of the time.

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Any new Sussex English students out there? If you're lucky, you'll get me for your first year compulsory module :)

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Day #1 on the Samsung Galaxy S II very pleasing. Weird recovery setup embedded in kernel. Battery life vs Desire HD is great.

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Whenever I cite Beckett, I get the irresistible urge to simply put "yes" in Zotero's "Abstract" field.

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Thanks to all who rtd and especially to @FHeimburger and @CareerAndrea who answered my Q. and will be thanked in the published article!

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I don't know, I'll never know: in the silence you don't know. You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on. Actually, I do know; I'm going home

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A good 1000 words written on commissioned article today. Going home to avoid rush and riots where reading will continue. #phdchat

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The @BritishLibrary is closing all reading rooms at 5pm today so staff and readers can get home safely.

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A riot is a spontaneous outpouring of discontent and violence that is not overtly political, but could nonetheless have political causes.

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There's a clear distinction between a riot and a protest: those who protest have hope of changing the system.

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Taken the plunge and moved my landline to @bebroadband; they've been such a good ISP and cheaper than BT for phone :)

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Encrypted Partition Recovery on Ubuntu 10.10

The other day I was installing Xubuntu 10.10 onto an old Mac G4 Powerbook and got the keyboard layout wrong. I had encrypted the entire disk and so, with the keyboard mapped entirely incorrectly ("j" was enter), I was unable to unlock the disk to continue. To solve this, I booted off the alternate…

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On Heseltine's much-needed N. London tour RT @dzhimbo I can see his magnificent mane in the wind as he dons his Greenham Common flak jacket

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Spending a Sunday morning writing about DFW, Infinite Jest and swerves between cynicism and naivety.

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I only do #ff once in a blue moon, so listen up. I feel like retweeting most of @qui_oui's posts, so save me the effort and just follow her!

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"America was the edge of the World. [...] Europe had found the site for its Kingdom of Death" - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

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Conference Paper: 'It sure's hell looked like war': Terrorism and the Cold War in Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and Don DeLillo's Underworld', 2010-06-09, University of Lublin

In an effort to ensure that I have a complete listing of my conference papers on my site, here is an abstract from the last International Pynchon Week conference at which I presented: In his recent examination of Against the Day, Luc Herman finds a ’social relevance’ in what is surely one of the…

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So, what's the Google+ equivalent to a hashtag? How can I find posts on a specific topic?